Aetogate: press and blog coverage

We're keeping track of all the coverage we see of the New Mexico
story. The following are listed most recent first (so newest
articles at the top). Since there is a lot to wade through here,
we have marked some of the ones we think are most interesting with
three red asterisks ***.

Note that we are not responsible for the
contents of external sites.

Tuesday 15 July

Up to this point, I have tried to keep my own opinions about
Aetogate under wraps, the better to serve as an objective collator
of other people's coverage. But I have, finally, gone public with
my own thoughts -- on a different site, so that this one remains
as objective as possible.

Friday 10 July

I think everyone now accepts that Aetogate is dying, if not dead:
the SVP's failure to engage with the allegations leaves no further
route by which to pursue redress. Still, there remain a few things
to be said:

Thursday 5 June

Kevin Padian's
lengthy comment
on the recent Catalogue of Organisms post explains clearly
what standard operating procedure is for allowing or denying
access to specimens in vertebrate palaeontology. In light of
recent obfuscation, this is very timely and welcome.

Tuesday 3 June

***
Christopher Taylor's
Catalogue of Organisms
has a considered discussion of
Who Owns the Data?,
i.e. who has the right to publish on a given specimen? "The right
to publish once access to specimens has been granted seems to be
fairly implicit. However, I am rather disappointed that it could
not be made explicit."

Monday 2 June

The widely read
Pharyngula
blog of P. Z. Myers
(University of Minnesota biologist and associate professor)
weighs in with
a withering summary of Aetogate:
"Sometimes, the politics of science can get ugly, and they don't
get much uglier than this ghastly mess [...] it sounds to this
outsider like a few senior scientists riding roughshod over their
junior colleagues and students."

***
Jon Wagner, in
an email on the publicly archived VRTPALEO list,
asks twelve highly pertinent questions about the SVP's verdict,
including "2) Why does the EEC place so much relative weight on
personal testimony, rather than tangible evidence?"

Thursday 27 March

Mickey Rowe, co-moderator with Mary Kirkaldy of
The Dinosaur Mailing List,
has added
a new section
to the Aetogate page on the DML site, summarising The Story So Far.
He has also written
a letter to the Governor of New Mexico[local copy],
calling for the removal of DCA head Stuart Ashman:
"It is clear to me [...] that Mr. Ashman is incapable of leading
such an investigation. After his third strike, it is time for him
to return to the dugout."

Monday 17 March

A brief update
on the Albuquerque Journal web-site indicates that "Jeffrey Martz,
one of the scientists who made those charges, has responded."
Martz's rebuttal is
on the Journal site.

Friday 14 March

Let me be blunt: either the content of this report is an exercise
in spin, disingenuity, obfuscation, deliberate misdirection, and
bald reciprocal accusation, or I have completely misunderstood
the ethics and practices of our profession. By my understanding
of those standards, no vertebrate paleontologist could possibly
agree with the bulk of the statements made in the report.

Also some days ago, Jeff Martz (one of the principals), in
an email on the publicly archived VRTPALEO list,
explained why he and others feel they must continue to pursue this
matter rather than, as some of the VRTPALEO list have suggested,
letting it drop.

Sunday 9 March

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
has another letter to the editor,
Museum Stonewalling Routine,
in which Henry Ortiz tells of running into stonewalling by the
NMMNHS and DCA, similar to what we are currently experiencing,
when he complained about unauthorised collecting on his land.
[local copy].

Saturday 8 March

The Reptipage
notes that Mark Norell of the AMNH has
set the record straight
on Lucas's assertion that the NMMNHS Bulletin peer-review system
is the same as is used for AMNH publications.

Friday 7 March

***
Wednesday's
Albuquerque Journal
had a letter to the editor,
Fossil Case Demands Inquiry,
from Angela Wandinger-Ness, President of the New Mexico Academy of
Science. (We missed this letter on Wednesday and now report it
belatedly). "It is imperative that the facts and circumstances
leading to the allegations be reviewed by an independent, unbiased
authority, as well as by subject experts." Because this letter
represents the opinion of a respected and important body, we have
taken a local copy.

Will Bair's blog,
The Dragon's Tales,
says that "the results of the Aetogate accusation review by the
review board put together by the State of New Mexico's Secretary
of Cultural Affairs is
a joke"
(italics his).

Thursday 6 March

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
has an editorial,
Thorough Airing Ends Up a Waste of Oxygen:
"Lucas is poorly served by a process so one-sided that it does
nothing to clear the cloud above the solid reputation he has
achieved. Apparently more familiar with juried art shows than
with juries selected for objectivity, Ashman fell short of the
goal of a thorough airing of the matter."

David Hone's blog
discusses the consequences for
the public image of science
when allegations such as those of Aetogate are not properly
investigated. "If we cannot be seen to be dealing with serious
allegations promptly, fairly and correctly then the public will
question what else we are doing."

Wednesday 5 March

***
The
Albuquerque Journal
now has a full article on the inquiry,
Review Panel Clears N.M. Museum Director,
but notes that "the review panel allowed Lucas and
his colleagues to speak in their defense but never heard from the
scientists who made the accusations" and that "the process is
marred by what is at the very least the strong appearance of
conflict of interest" (quote from Janet Stemwedel).

Laelaps
(Brian Switek)
looks at the inquiry report and asks
Was anyone surprised by this?
"The findings of [...] seems to reflect Silberling's earlier
asinine assertions about a collective of young paleontologists
that have targeted Lucas for persecution for no discernible
reason. Perhaps if they actually talked to Parker and Martz such
misunderstandings would be avoided."

***A brief update
on the Albuquerque Journal web-site indicates that "the New Mexico
Museum of Natural History and Science innocent of stealing the
work of outside scientists." The findings are
available as a PDF.
More coverage to follow.

Monday 3 March

Today's
Albuquerque Journal
has a
letter to the editor
from Ted Guinn: "I have been a volunteer docent at the Museum of
Natural History and Science for over ten years. During this time I
have had many meetings and communications with Spencer Lucas, who
is the current acting director. I have always found him to be a
scholar and a gentleman and I cannot believe him to be capable of
the acts he is accused of."

Sunday 2 March

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
asks:
Who Controls Access to Research on Fossils?
It notes that Lucas says of specimens held at NMMNHS "You have to
remember, we're talking about fossils we collected in our
collection [...] All this stuff is our stuff" but also observes
that "That is not the way the U.S. Forest Service views the
issue. Fossils collected on Forest Service land remain federal
property. 'Fossils collected from public Forest Service lands
should be made available to the public, including qualified
researchers,' said Kathy DeLucas, spokeswoman for the Carson
National Forest."

Thursday 28 February

the Dalhousie Gazette
has an error-strewn summary of the case,
A scandal by any other name.
Despite the scientific mistakes, this is interesting because it
shows that Aetogate is getting attention from far afield -- Nova
Scotia, in this case.

Monday 25 February

***The Ethical Palaeontologist
(Julia Heathcote) has posted
a strongly negative reaction
of the new DCA inquiry and Silberling's pre-emptive letter:
"I was shaking with rage by the time I'd finished reading it.
[My] husband was almost shedding tears of anger at just how
little regard for justice and due process there was. And we're
not even involved!"

Sunday 24 February

The Reptipage
dissects the DCA's new inquiry and Silberling's pre-emptive
conclusions, and
argues
that "if Norman Silberling wants to cheer in Lucas's corner, then
he should have the right to do so. But he shouldn't be 'on the
jury,' when it comes to the actual case."

Dinochick
(ReBecca Hunt)
questions the
objectivity of the DCA's review,
concluding "I only hope that Stuart Ashman and other state
officials will realize the blunder [that] including these two
impartial parties has caused and will conduct a open, and
impartial review on the matter."

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
has a short and sweet editorial,
Old Bones of Contention
lambasting the DCA's
new inquiry
and selection of outside scientists:
"[Lucas's claim-jump] seems about as far south of scientific
rigor as the choice of these particular outside scientists falls
short of due diligence.
[...]
Cultural Affairs should remand this dispute to the jurisdiction
of a scientific academy that at least has some notion of what
objectivity is."

John Hawkes,
assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin,
uses Aetogate to discuss
students' vulnerability to academic theft,
noting that the culprits are usually "people who already are
masters of the strategies junior people can use for redress, and
who therefore are well situated to game the system in order to get
away with it."

Thursday 21 February

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
tells us
Panel to Examine Museum Ethics Flap:
"Members of the museum's executive committee and two outside
experts will meet in closed session to review allegations that
Lucas and some of his colleagues took credit for work done by
other scientists [...]
One of the outside experts brought in to review the case, retired
New Mexico Bureau of Mines geologist Orin Anderson, has
collaborated with Lucas on scientific publications in the past."

Sunday 10 February

***
Today's
Albuquerque Journal
runs
an editorial
beginning "With the good name of the New Mexico Museum of Natural
History and Science under a cloud, a formal review of complaints
against acting Director Spencer Lucas is urgently needed" and
concluding "appropriate behavior, especially for a group of
professional fossil-hunters, would be digging for the truth."

Friday 8 February

***
The front page of today's
Albuquerque Journal
carries the follow-up story
Museum Ethics Spat May Get New Review.
(Sit through a commercial to get non-subscriber access.) This is
real progress. The key quote, from Stuart Ashman of the
Department of Cultural Affairs, is: ``I agree that saying "no
merit" is not enough of an answer [...] "There isn't [a written
record of the previous investigation]. There should be."

Tuesday 5 February

***
Kevin Padian's
substantial comment on the first of the Adventures in
Ethics and Science articles offers some refreshingly forthright
opinions on the issues. Padian is a widely respected evolutionary
biologist and was an expert witness at the Dover intelligent
design trial.

***
Kevin Padian again, this time with
comment on Rex Dalton's Nature article (page down
to the eighth comment) on the subject of whether the NMMNHS
Bulletin is or is not a peer-reviewed journal. Several of the
other comments are also very interesting.

Sunday 3 February

***
The front page of today's
Albuquerque Journal
is carrying the story
Museum Boss Faces Ethics Charge.
(Unfortunately, it is necessary to sit through a commercial before
viewing the story, but it doesn't take long.)
This is significant as it is the first coverage of the story in
the mainstream (not science-specific) media.
At the time of writing, this story is at the top of the Most
Requested list.